Back on Murder

by Mark J. Bertrand

  Hands go up across the room. I glance at my new buddy before hoisting mine. He shakes his head and does likewise. Everybody’s craning around, like they expect to sniff out the leak here and now by spotting a telltale unraised hand.

  “Okay, okay. You can put your hands down. Lieutenant, you have a few words you’d like to say?”

  Rick, never at a loss for words, spends the next five minutes talking about his satisfaction in being asked to join the task force, and his determination to do everything in his power to turn this negative into a positive. While he’s speechmaking, I quiz the constables for details about the news report. One of them, a thick-necked bulldog with a tight military crew cut, cups a hand to my ear and fills me in. The lead story on the Channel 13 news last night was about trouble inside the task force. No progress is being made in the hunt for Hannah Mayhew because of interagency rivalries and a general lack of organization. “Sources inside the investigation” were credited with the scoop.

  After Rick starts repeating himself, Wanda squeezes back to the mic and starts going round robin through the room, soliciting verbal reports from the team checking out white vans, the canvass of Willow–brook witnesses, and the head of the surveillance squad keeping tabs on James Fontaine. He’s a body-builder type in dark fatigues, more like a swat sniper than a binocular boy.

  “Fontaine’s movements are pretty regular,” he says. “He hasn’t led us anywhere.”

  No mention of Carter Robb’s stakeout of the Fontaine house, or my curbside visit with him. I try to catch Cavallo’s eye, making sure she picked up on that, but she’s busy taking down notes. Though I’m tempted to raise my hand and ask a question, I decide to wait.

  After the rest of the reports are made and new assignments handed out, Wanda wraps things up and dismisses everyone. The sheriff ’s detective shoulders past me.

  “That was a whole lot of nothing,” he says.

  I decide to stay put, letting the room empty ahead of me. Rick Villanueva skirts the side wall. No one stops him to talk, so he makes good time. Before I can slip away, we’re face-to-face.

  “Funny seeing you here,” he says. “I thought your days of exile had come to an end.”

  My smirk just amuses him more. “I could say the same thing about you, Rick. Are you, like, the new press secretary or something?”

  “Not by choice.” He leans in, lowering his voice. “To be honest, I’d rather be anywhere but here. In case you don’t know it yet, this is a sinking ship. But the chief himself called me. He wants me on this thing to try and turn it around.”

  “With what, your winning smile?”

  “Something like that,” he says.

  “Any idea who talked to Channel 13?”

  He chuckles. “Between you and me? I’m thinking somebody at the Sheriff ’s Department. They’re not too happy about hpd taking the lead on this.”

  “Aren’t these jurisdictional things settled up front, though?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But that was before this was all over Fox and TruTV. Now people are thinking this case could make a few careers – and probably end some, too. If you want my advice, get out while you can.”

  I pat him on the arm. “Too late for me, pal.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  After Villanueva pushes on, Cavallo comes down the center aisle with a file box balanced on her hip. I offer to take it, expecting her to put up a fight. Instead, she hands it over. It’s heavy as bricks.

  “All yours.”

  “What’s in here?” I ask, peering through the gap in the lid.

  “Witness interviews. All the kids we talked to at Klein High, all the kids from the Cypress youth group. That’s our project for today, looking for new leads.”

  “Where do we start?”

  She suppresses a yawn. “The nearest coffeepot.”

  Two styrofoam cups of scalding black brew later, we clear off space at the end of a long folding table, pull some chairs up, and divvy up the interview reports. I feel a little guilty for having slept last night, since Cavallo’s bloodshot eyes and involuntary yawning fits make it clear she didn’t.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She moves a paper back and forth in front of her nose. “I can barely get my eyes to focus.”

  “You notice the surveillance report didn’t mention anything about Robb, or us meeting him out in front of the Fontaine house?”

  She silently peruses the form.

  “You hear me?”

  “I heard you,” she says. “That was my doing, March. He asked if it was significant and I said no.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “It wasn’t significant, was it?” She puts the report down and fingers the cross at her throat. “And anyway, I didn’t want Wanda to start asking why we’d re-interviewed Robb. I figured the less said the better.”

  “For my benefit?” I ask. “Or his?”

  “His? What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” It was a stupid thing to say. I just thought that, she being one of them, a co-religionist, maybe she’d decided to cut the young minister some slack. “The thing we need to talk about is that dna test. When are we going to get a result?”

  She sighs. “You’re a one-note, you know that? Do you have any idea the kind of grief I’d get if Wanda or anyone else found out we’re pursuing this? I had to tap-dance around the whole swab thing already, and now she’s giving me funny looks.”

  “Why keep it a secret?”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I’m just being discreet.”

  “But the test is being done, right? You took care of it? Cavallo, look me in the eye. You did take care of it, right?”

  She looks at me, then blinks. “You know Sheryl Green at the medical examiner’s office? She’s doing it.”

  “Yeah, I know her.”

  Remembering Green’s interest in the case, I’m somewhat reassured, but I’d still rather have Bridger involved. Maybe I’ll call him and see if there’s anything he can do to rush things along.

  “By the way,” I say, “I need to take a couple of hours today. Another angle to pursue.”

  She taps a finger on her stack of interviews. “This is the angle we’re pursuing.”

  “I know that. How about one hour?”

  “How about lunch, then. You can do whatever you want on your break, all right? Now, can we please get to it?”

  Just twenty minutes into the reading, I find myself underlining typos. I guess serving under Captain Hedges has had an effect. The minutes drag by, which is fine with me. I’m in no hurry to talk to Wilcox. No hurry at all.

  Stephen Wilcox is an Anglophile at heart, one of those guys who’s traced his lineage back to some countryside castle, who can list a few centuries’ worth of sovereigns in the order that they reigned, and wears tattersall and waxed cotton whenever the inhospitable Houston climate will allow. He tells me I’m paying, then says he’ll meet me at the Black Labrador, our old stomping ground.

  Given the distance, my lunch break is going to be a long one, meaning I’ll have to face Cavallo’s wrath. So be it.

  Back in the day, Wilcox and I spent hours at the Black Lab, a Tudor-style pub on Montrose near Richmond, at the far end of a cobbled courtyard anchored by the ivy-clad Montrose Library, drinking in front of the unlit fireplace and watching the knee-socked waitresses scoot by. Once he even tried to coax me onto the giant chessboard they have on the front lawn to push the pieces around, but I drew the line at that. A cheeky snap of Charles and Di, severed down the middle, used to hang prominently up front, though it’s been long since replaced by a reverential portrait of the dead princess.

  I haven’t been back since our split and I’m not looking forward to it. He’s already installed at one of the creaky tables, his checked jacket draped over the back of his chair. Seeing him again in the flesh, a rush of feeling floods back. The long, thin Easter Island face with the jutting jaw and heavy-lidded eyes. The childhood scar bisecting the left
eyebrow, the thinning blond hair buzzed short in an effort to conceal how much is gone. This was the one guy I could always trust. What happened with us?

  “I ordered the mussels,” he says.

  An involuntary smile. “Thanks. I’ll pass.”

  What happened was simple. Wilcox got tired of covering for my lapses. He got fed up with my indifference to the job. He cut me slack at first, saying he understood, saying he knew the kind of pain I must be in. But that sympathy could only last so long. When I was sloppy he’d tidy up, when I was indifferent, he’d make the extra effort. When I started making up my own rules, though, he drew the line. I remember him standing over me, one of my fictitious reports balled in his fist. “What is this? What are you trying to do to me?” And I remember staring back at him, unfazed: “Do what you want. I don’t care anymore.”

  So what changed? It’s hard to say. Was it as simple as seeing those severed cords hanging from the bed frame?

  I don’t need to look at the menu, but I do anyway just to have a prop in hand. The waitress comes over in a black tee and khaki skirt, her ribbed black socks pulled halfway over her knee. She tells me what’s good, then shrugs when I order the unadventurous fish and chips.

  “When in Rome,” I say, glancing up at the timbered ceiling.

  Wilcox doesn’t smile. “You want to tell me what I’m doing here?”

  “You chose the place.”

  “What I mean is, why is it that you can call out of the blue and I drop everything? That’s what I don’t understand. Does it make me a masochist?”

  “You’re getting a free meal out of it.”

  “We both know you owe me more than that.”

  There’s a crack in the wooden table that suddenly takes on a fascinating aspect. I scratch at it with my nail, not wanting to see the expression on his face. “Listen, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”

  “Important to you, you mean.”

  “And you.”

  He coughs into his hand. “Why do I doubt that?”

  Driving over, I tried to tell myself his voice sounded pleasantly surprised over the phone. Maybe he’d even be happy to see me again. Wrong. I have no choice but to spit it out.

  “What do you know about a guy named Joe Thomson?”

  He ponders the question awhile. “Why are you asking?”

  “He came to me with an offer.”

  I tell him the whole story, only leaving out the setting. He knows about the Paragon, and the last thing I need is a lecture. The further I get into the story, the more interested he becomes. His mussels arrive and he leaves them untouched, his eyes fixed on me.

  “I said the odds were slim, but Thomson told me to come to you specifically. He said you’d be interested in what he had to tell. Was he right?”

  Wilcox sniffs. “He wasn’t wrong. I can’t make any promises, Roland, but this is something my people would be very interested in. I’m not sure having you involved is going to work for us, though.”

  “It was me he came to. Take it or leave it.”

  “Setting that aside for a moment, are you telling me you don’t know who this guy is?”

  “He looked familiar.”

  “For a detective, you don’t pay much attention, you know that?” He shakes his head, like he’s remembering what it was about me he never liked. “Joe Thomson used to be one of the worst guys in the department, the kind the psych evaluations are supposed to weed out. We’ve got a thick file on him in IAD, full of excessive-force complaints going all the way back to his rookie days. Before I transferred, Internal Affairs was looking at him in connection with a couple of different cases. Planting evidence, making threats against fellow officers, we’re talking a seriously bad dude.”

  “I got that vibe off him. But you said he ‘used to be’ bad?”

  “Well,” he says, dragging the word out. “About a year ago, he requested therapy. Of his own volition apparently. He patched things up with his ex-wife. They ended up getting remarried. As part of the therapy he started taking art classes – ”

  “Art classes?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know. But I guess he really got into it. Does some kind of sculpting I guess. Anyway, we’re talking about a pretty significant change in the guy.”

  I imagine a pottery wheel spinning a lump of wet clay in endless revolutions, my uninvited table guest of the night before hunched over, applying gritty fingers to the task of shaping. Or maybe taking a hammer and chisel to a block of marble, I don’t know. For someone like me, a skeptic when it comes to the power of therapy, it’s hard to credit the kind of transformation Wilcox describes. Cleaning up his act, reconciling with his estranged wife, and now coming clean about whatever corruption he’s witnessed on the job. If only it were that easy to change course, to hit the reset button and become a good man again.

  “What prompted this change of his?” I ask, suddenly thinking of Coleman, the supposed prison convert we rearrested at the George R. Brown. “Let me guess. Did he find Jesus?”

  “You’re not going to like this,” he says, cracking a smile. “What changed Thomson was finding himself a new role model. Thomson left the gang unit and started working for Reg Keller.”

  Keller. Some messiah.

  If I have a nemesis at HPD, it’s Keller, the man who’s been dogging my steps for the past fifteen years or more. I tried to bring him down once and failed miserably.

  “The Homeland Security thing?” I ask, keeping my voice even.

  He nods. “The Golden Parachute Brigade.”

  “So that’s how he knew I’d be hooked: Keller’s involved. You know, I was talking to one of Keller’s guys the other day. Remember Tony Salazar?”

  “Sure.”

  “One of his CIS wandered into our cars-for-criminals net.”

  “Salazar’s on our radar screen, too. He paid cash for a nice boat a while back, and since he jumped to Keller’s camp, he’s been living way above his means.”

  “Well, I respect the guy personally. He’s a sharp detective.”

  “Maybe,” Wilcox says, meaning not so much. “But getting back to Thomson, I think Keller had a talk with the man. Told him to get his ducks in a row, that kind of thing. If you look at Keller’s roster, you’d think he was running some kind of halfway house. He recruits the worst disciplinary cases, then turns them into model detectives.”

  “By pointing them to the real money?”

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s my theory anyway. If I could prove it, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” He pauses. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  He slides around the table and heads upstairs to the restroom. As soon as he goes, the waitress comes by to refill my water glass. I take a bite of fish, surprised that it’s gone cold.

  I met Reg Keller a long time ago, when we were both still in uniform. I was on patrol and he was an up-and-coming sergeant about to make the jump to plainclothes. We rode a shift together one night and something happened. He put me in a bad spot. It took a long time for me to work out the truth, not until I made detective myself. Once I did, though, I was at his throat, and for a while it looked like I’d nail him.

  But I missed my chance.

  My career rocketed into the stratosphere, burned bright a little while, then tumbled back to earth. My life in general went off the rails. Meanwhile, Keller racked up promotion after promotion, storing favors away for a rainy day, until he was too far up the line for a rank and filer like me to so much as touch.

  Sometime after the Dubai Ports World scandal back in early 2006, when the administration tried to hand over American ports to foreign control, including stevedore operations at the Port of Houston, Keller somehow managed to get the green light on a special unit whose official remit was to assess security threats related to the port and Bush Intercontinental Airport. Even a longtime opponent like me had to admire his cunning. There were already a number of agencies doing the work, so Keller’s team was superfluous from the start, but the assignment woul
d look great on a résumé and no doubt lead to lucrative security work once he retired. Hence the nickname Golden Parachute Brigade. Nice work if you can get it.

  “You look angry,” Wilcox says, resuming his seat.

  “I am angry. It’s all coming back to me, the whole thing with Keller. You’re telling me you can’t touch a guy like that in IAD? Are they even trying?”

  “I’m not going to comment on any ongoing investigations. But let me make something clear. For Thomson to get what he wants, this blanket immunity, we’re going to need more from him than the shooters from your multiple murder. If he can give us something on Keller, on the other officers in the unit, then we can talk. You have a problem with that?”

  Oh, I don’t have a problem with that. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Wilcox should know better than to even ask. Finding those shooters might be my lifeline back into Homicide, but bringing Keller down, that would be personal. Like I said, I have my reasons.

  “You take care of things with the district attorney,” I tell him, “and I’ll make sure Thomson’s ready to talk. And, Steve, we should move fast on this, all right?”

  “I’ll start making the calls the minute I leave.”

  I reach my hand across the table. “It’s good to be working with you again.”

  He just looks at my hand, not wanting to take it. At the last second he changes his mind. We shake, and afterward we both look away in embarrassment.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” he says.

  “I know.” I lay some cash on the table and get up. “But it will.”

  “March, wait.”

  I stop, but I don’t sit back down.

  “How’s Charlotte doing?”